 So I've been looking for a really good notes application for quite a long time and honestly Despite there being like a lot of note-taking apps out there There aren't that many good ones to be frank with you All of them have certain quirks that just don't really work for my workflow or they're really Contained into one Platform or the sink is hidden behind a paywall. There's always something about these note-taking applications That just means that I can't use them. So I always go back to old faithful, which is Google keep and Google keep notes are Okay, I suppose if you're okay using Google stuff, which I have to be since I have to use it for work Anyway, so it doesn't really matter all that much, but it's still not great Like there's not a lot of the features that I'd expect from a note-taking app And it seems to be abandoned like a lot of the development work on it just seems to have completely fallen off It's been the same for years. I used to be an Evernote user and Evernote is a pretty good application however, the premium version is pretty expensive and I don't really care for the multitude of emails that Evernote sends out to its Users, I know you can turn those off But they don't always listen to me for whatever reason and I just keep getting these emails and it just drives me nuts So when I saw that notes nook, which has been around for a while has gone open source I was really interested because just as there are so few really good General note-taking applications. There are even fewer note-taking applications that are open source and also good So I thought I'd take a look at notes nook now. It turns out that I've actually used this application before I have no recollection of it, but I haven't I had an account with them and You know, I like said, I don't remember ever using it, but apparently somewhere along the line I give them my email address. So that's the first thing we should get out of the way in order to use this You do have to have an account. There's no anonymous usage of this application So that's just out there if that's something that's going to be a deal-breaker for you You should just move on if it's not which is probably not given that this is an Evernote application or an Evernote alternative I should say and You have to have an account for Evernote as well. So it's not that big of a deal So let's go ahead and jump in I'll show you exactly what notes nook looks like So this is what notes nook looks like and if you've ever used Evernote before it looks Somewhat like Evernote. It has the basic setup three column view. It has The big view along the center of the page where you take your notes and along the side the list of notes And then the sidebar basic setup for anything you want to know So your default view is going to be a list of your notes and you also have access to things like notebooks Which can be sorted by topic So you can have different topics that have embedded notes inside of them, which is really nice You can have favorites tags the monographs option is for public notes So you can have a note and then publish it to a URL which can be viewed by anybody which is very nice It looks like this so you can create a note that doesn't require a login to view Which is again very nice now, obviously without a login the person viewing it can't make any edits to it I'm not and I'm not actually sure that they can make edits to it Even if they do log in but for sure without logging in there's no editing of this It's just viewing it's read-only now the default view of this is going to be light modes So it looks like this in light mode that is very bright So luckily dark mode is included in the free version now That's going to be a running theme in this video a lot of the stuff that you would expect to be there It's probably going to be hidden behind their paywall and while I don't begrudge any software developer to make money Some of these features aren't Really things that I expect to be behind the paywall things like automatic syncing is just something that I'd expect to be free But it's not you have to do the syncing manually And there's a few things else that you can see here on the list I'll go through here in a second, but let's stick with some of the things that are positive first So it's very well designed even the light mode is very pretty. I prefer the dark dark mode. It is a very Nicely designed application and it works well in a window manager So a lot of applications that are designed like this tend to have Random theming artifacts that don't really work well inside of a window manager This works just fine in a window manager, which I found really nice It has a lot of great features so like tags notebooks favorites things that I've already talked about It has fairly good markdown support So if I go back to the regular notes here in my first note here So it does lists and headings and stuff like that. It doesn't do links for whatever reason now You can obviously insert a link if you want to but it doesn't pay attention to markdown links It has the regular bold and italics and lists and stuff like that just like you'd expect It also has access to things like a task list outline lists horizontal rule code blocks mass and formulas block quotes and Embeds so you can embed a website or a image from a website if you want to it also has Forms and tables as well that you can embed now There's a couple of things on this list that I should mention before we move on that are hidden behind the paywall So the biggest one here is images. So if you select Upload from disk you can actually do that without paying for it Which is a huge huge problem for me like I like to insert images into my notes You know screenshots and stuff like that that and that's something that you can do with Evernote I'm not sure if you can do it with Evernote for free anymore You used to be able to but either way the fact that this is hidden behind a paywall Just regular image support is not something that I'm really all that happy for I'm really not all that happy about The attachments are also hidden behind the paywall. So neither of these things actually work in the free version So there is a dark mode. I've shown you that The it's available for iOS and Android now if you look at the premium version when you when that little pop-up that comes up When you try to attach an image it says that it's available in with Firefox and Chrome and Safari I'm assuming that's premium only because I cannot find those downloads anywhere Which is again not something that Evernote at least as far as I know hides behind a paywall I wish those were free because clipping from a browser is a big feature of a note-taking application At least for me it is because I like to save application or websites to my notes for Later on for like video ideas or for work or whatever and that those aren't available now It's possible that I just missed them somewhere. It's completely possible I did a search in the Firefox web store notes nook was not there and I could not find a link to that on the website either So I'm assuming those are hidden behind the paywall. It has a focus mode. So if you want to just Write in this without any of the extra frills are you can do that? It's not the greatest focus mode I've ever seen there's still buttons here. Also, it's not centered I prefer a focus mode to be centered not that big of a deal But it's still something that I've noticed, you know what I mean? I talked about the monograph public note system Which is really nice. It's definitely something that you honestly I'd expect that to be hidden behind a paywall and not some of this other stuff But that it's free is still nice and it does have version control So if you go up here to the three dots up here at the top you can see that it saves different versions Which is nice So if you made a mistake or you want to go back to something before you've made a whole bunch of edits You can do that just by clicking one of these it also shows accent or color coding for the note here You can't do that without paying for it. Unfortunately. Again, that's another thing that's hidden behind the paywall feature also behind the paywall are password protected notes and things like that now For free you do get end-to-end encryption, which is nice So all this stuff is and an end-to-end encrypted. So you do get some privacy control there Which is nice some of the other things that I've found that are a little bit annoying so the Automatic syncing is another big one that I'm really disappointed is not here because if you forget to not forget to actually hit the sync button Which is down here at the bottom It actually, you know, it won't sync your stuff won't be on your phone or whatever You have to do that on your own as I said all the color coding options are in the accent colors Are all hidden behind the paywall the this part here is Apparently false because it showed those icons there in that pop-up that I showed you but Again must be hidden behind the paywall. We were either that I couldn't find them now this part here is a little Not unusual. It's definitely something that follows a lot of note-taking absolute rounds So if you do if you have a lot of notes like I do in a lot of my other Applications searching is something that you want to be able to do really easy and obviously Google keep does this really well because you just have a search box up the top and it searches through everything with notes nook That's not the case. So you have two different ways of searching here and they're not connected So there's a search icon up here. This search is just the note Okay, and that's fine. If you have a long note, you can just go up here and search through it You can also I believe control f no control f does not work We'll talk about keybiting here in a second and you also have this search box up here now Both of these work differently. This one here works just within the note You're on this one here works on whatever page you're on So if you're in the general notes section where it shows all of the notes That's where you're going to have the best luck of searching for things because I'll search through all of your notes But if you're just in a regular notebook It will search for just the notes in that notebook or search through just the notes in that notebook It won't search for anything outside of it. So search works differently depending on where you're at which is Not the greatest I call that a little bit mediocre Just simply because I'd like just a search box where I can search through everything all the time no matter where I'm at So because sometimes I want to be able to say I'm in here working on this note here Which is inside of a notebook. Maybe I want to search for note That's not in this notebook or is it another notebook or something I don't want to have to click back click back go to that notebook go to the topic and then Search, you know, I mean obviously I could sir I believe you can search through notebooks on the notebooks page So that would actually be one step closer, but still it's a little annoying So that's something that I noticed another thing that I noticed I you probably just saw is as far as I'm aware there are no key buttons in this thing whatsoever If there are I haven't been able to find it so if you go to the settings There's not a lot of stuff here for actual customizations. So you can Set up backup so that you can transfer your data from one place to another or if you lose your your account You can get your data back. You can manage the attachments. You can set up to factor authentication in terms of appearance There's going to be accent colors, which you can access without, you know, paying for it You do get access to dark mode or you can follow the system themes You can change what home pages is by default So if you wanted to always be in your notebooks page, you can do that You can change the default zoom you can change whether there's it uses double spaces or not You can configure the toolbar, which is this part up here And you can choose where those things are which is actually a lot of customization Which I didn't expect given the rest of this stuff there in there is the ability to back up and restore other than that there's nothing here for key bindings, which is a Disappointment because I'm a keyboard centric user of my computer. I want to be able to use some key bindings Now I don't need extensive key bindings or even the ability to edit them really just some default ones like control F for find Would be nice But as far as I'm aware where it does not work So any other key bindings that I found like alt one or alt two to actually go to like Switch between these over here. That'd be cool, but it doesn't, you know, it just there's no key bindings here whatsoever and The last two things here are things that are probably not that big a deal So there are not a lot of fonts you get sans serif serif and mono space. That's it. It does not access system fonts I really wish it did because it'd be cool to be able to organize your notes and then Change the formatting to different fonts in different sections. I mean, that'd be kind of cool I don't know if there's some kind of technological thing that's barring them from doing that But it's not there. You only get those three options And the last one is that the premium version, which you're probably gonna want if you want all these extra features that are At least somewhat essential. It's expensive. It's $50 a year. No, that's It's 50 bucks a year. It is cheaper than Evernote So I'll just put that out there if you are using Evernote and you are paying for Evernote This is cheaper. So you would save money actually by switching to this if you were a rabid Evernote user and wanted something that is open source and I'm considering paying for it honestly because there are some things here that I really like so I like the design of it I like the syncing capabilities. I played around a little bit with the application on iOS. It's actually really nice The mark darn support is okay enough. It's good enough for my use So that's really nice and some of the stuff that's hidden behind pay the paywall are things that I wouldn't mind paying for Even if it is a little bit pricey. So things like the automatic syncing things like the Ability to add pictures and stuff like that those things are things that I'd want and I might be willing to pay for I'm just there's a few things here that I'm really disappointed that aren't here like the key bindings and Added fonts and stuff like that. So that's basically notes. Nook. It's a really good application I know I sounded a little bit down on it for a little while there and I've noted a lot of Negatives because a lot of the stuff that you'd want for this Is behind a paywall, but Honestly to tell you the truth It doesn't bother me all that much as there's a paywall Despite the tone that I took throughout most of the video because I understand open source development is not free Despite as much you know, despite how we treat it sometimes. So $50 a year not horrible And if there were just those few extra features like the key bindings and the font support I would probably definitely pay for it as it is right now I'm still considering it because despite my criticisms of it it is still better than Google keep and The fact that that's true because Google keep does not have notebooks or tags. It actually might have tags I'm actually not sure but it does have notebooks and it's just kind of the organization of Google keep is just Totally off all your notes are in one place It's a mess and I like the ability here to to organize stuff into notebooks into different topics and stuff like that and that will Hopefully keep me a little bit more organized. So I'm like I said, I'm considering the the price for the premium version I'm gonna use the free version for a few more days and see how it goes If I continue to actually use it then I will probably go ahead and pay the money But anyways, that is notes Nick if you have comments on this you can leave those in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you You can follow me on Twitter at the next cash can follow me on massive on our odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon a patreon comm slash Linux cash just like all these fine people Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon YouTube. You guys are all Absolutely amazing people. Thank you so very very much without you The channel just would not be where it is right now. So I thank you so very much for your support Thanks everybody for watching and thank you for 20,000. I I'm really enjoying being over at 20,000 marks. Thanks for thank you for watching. I'll see you next time